Various types of businesses or enterprises operate in a computing environment that includes mechanisms for tracking and managing various types of assets throughout the enterprise. As one example, in the broadcast industry, automation or asset management applications can be installed at one or more facility, each of which solutions may store metadata that describes various assets including audio, video or a combination of audio and video content. The assets can include the content or the material physical media on which the content is stored. Each of the asset management applications may utilize a unique subset of metadata or a combination of metadata that may vary from application to application.
Many applications in the broadcast environment are not integrated, or they are loosely integrated in a point-to-point manner. Consequently, users or administrators are often required to enter the same data into multiple applications. In addition to these efforts being duplicative, this also presents the possibility of data entry error. Additionally, there tend to be manually established policies that control circumstances surrounding when multiple applications represent the same information. Such policies are not easily enforced since conflicts for values of data representing content must be resolved manually. Data transfers, if supported, are usually batch-oriented, which often means that many applications do not have the most current information at all times. This can result in erroneous business decisions being made.
Additionally, metadata for a given application can vary according to application requirements and information needed to describe or characterize the content. Continuing with the broadcast example, in certain applications metadata may identify a title or information sufficient to populate an electronic programming guide. In other instances, metadata can provide a complete index of different scenes such as for a movie as well as providing business rules detailing how content package may be displayed, copied or sold. Separate uses of the metadata further may depend on the type of facility or customer that is utilizing the metadata as well as the source of the content and metadata. For example, separate uses for metadata have originated from studios, distribution networks (e.g., cable or satellite) as well as down to consumer premises equipment (e.g., set top boxes, programmable video recorders and the like).